1-on-1 with Patrick is a series of web design coaching sessions for wannabe web designers.
In this episode we have Ben Wall from Leicestershire, England! We discuss:
- Where Ben is at in his web design journey
- Getting a web design client to “buy in” to the project
- Should you force clients to send you all of the necessary content?
- How long does it take to build the average website?
- I review Ben’s website and branding, DotWall
- Optimizing your website for presentation on Google
- How Ben found my podcast and closing thoughts
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Tools & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Ben’s website
- Elementor
- Jet Engine Plugins
- Content Snare
- Building a Successful Brand
- Following a Web Design Process
- Starting a Podcast for Improving SEO
Episode Transcript
Where Ben is At in His Web Design Journey
Ben: Hey, can you hear me?
Patrick: I can. I can’t see you though, so where are you from?
Ben: Leicestershire in the UK.
Patrick: Okay.
Ben: You know where that is?
Patrick: I mean, I’ve been to London and Canterbury.
Ben: Okay, it’s a hundred and 150 miles North of London in the middle of the UK.
Patrick: How long have you been doing, do you say you just started doing web design like six months ago, basically.
Ben: Yeah basically I’ve been doing on and off weapon design for about, well, all my life, pretty much. I used to have a blog when I was younger with my mate and I was on WordPress. And then yeah, I’ve doubled. I used to own a biking shop. So when, when, when we had that, I started my own website for the store, which was based on Magento. And that was a massive learning curve because Magento is quite complex, but it was the best e-commerce solution I could find at a time that integrated with eBay and Amazon. So as you listed things on the Magento website, you could automatically get them to list on eBay and Amazon and it did all the stock control system. So through all that I then went on to doing a few other little things, but then yeah, never really got into it as a passion to make it a full-time job. So I’ve always wanted to, and then we got in the UK, we’ve got furlough pay. So basically while you’re off work they gave you a supplement allowance basically. So that allowed me, gave me the freedom to stay at home and actually focus on doing this while maintaining that income.
Patrick: Sweet! Well, I mean, it looks like you’ve so you had some past experience with it then, and for sure when you were younger kind of you kind of dabbled back and forth.
Ben: Yeah, dabbled a bit and I’ve always been a bit of a geek, so I know the ins and outs of the computer and stuff. So I kind of know the basics of websites, web pages and all that sort of stuff.
Patrick: Yeah, I like it. I couldn’t help, but notice there’s a section here that looks pretty familiar,
Ben: Which one is that?
Patrick: The six reasons to choose dot wall.
Ben: Yes inspiration yeah, yeah.
Patrick: Nothing wrong with that.
Ben: Yeah, no I’ve already liked. So when I landed on your website, I love it’s a very much a tunnel driven website. So you always make sure you go down the website and navigate to appal where it’s done. I mean, I’ve been reading quite a bit about the delight, the customer journey, the visitor journey, and it’s all about trying to get them to get them to click off the homepage is quite a commitment. So the homepage would be quite a nice funnel, which they kind of, as they go down, they get more and more interested buy into the social proof. Then when they get to the bottom, by the time you’re asking them for a call to action, they’re ready to commend. So that’s why I’ve been using that on most websites been doing, going forward really in it. I’m hoping it’s the right thing to do.
Patrick: Yeah that’s the idea. That’s stuff for the strategy. I live with my website and the multiple landing pages that I have. So you mentioned you got some clients already. How did you manage that?
Ben: So basically I’ve haven’t really, but my partner’s got a very good social network in, in their local village. So with the family and friends and stuff, and I’ve always been quite reserved before, never really willing to put myself out there, but I thought for this web design stuff, I’m just going to just throw for an artist. So I’ve just been putting stuff on Facebook. My partner’s family have been retweeting it, reposting it and stuff. And luckily two or three people have reached out and actually commissioned websites from meetings, which is really good. And then I’ve just been in a bitch, been doing a bit of networking. So I reached out to one person, it was a marketing person in my local town. And she was like I said to her, basically, if you get work, I can, we can refer each other basically. And then she said, actually, I’ve got a charity website that needs doing now, if you want to send a proposal for it so I did that as well. That’s still ongoing so I’ve had about six or five websites so far that have come in.
Patrick: Wow, that’s awesome. You said the first two or three they came from Twitter?
Ben: So basically I’ve been putting stuff on Facebook and my Instagram. And then, yeah, my family would see it, they’d repost it and then because of their network and the local villages where we live and they’ve been recommended me as well. So somebody owns a deli near me and they put on their Facebook, but they need a web design. Does anyone, can anyone recommend one? And then my partner’s mum went on and said I really recommend Ben is really good. So then she reached out to me and said, Oh, I’ve been recommended to you by, by so-and-so set up social proof in inaction that obviously recommendations come higher than anything else.
Patrick: That’s good. I guess the question now becomes then what do you need help with? How can I help you?
Getting a Web Design Client to “Buy In” to the Project
Ben: Yeah so I just want to pick your brains really. I mean, obviously you’ve been doing this a while now. I mean, one of the most challenging things I’m facing at the minute is getting customers to understand how to pay, like not how to pay, sorry, but the urgency of pay. And so for example, the charity one, which I did really early on, I think that was my first website. The proposal was about 800 pounds, which is about $950, a thousand dollars, something like that. I got a deposit off them, which took quite a while. But then, because there was no real end point I’m still waiting for content. I’m still waiting for them to finish it. I was still waiting for like the donation form to be and stuff. So it’s not on me, the ball’s in their court. But it’s been like three or four months now where I’ve just not been prepaid. So I don’t know if you’ve got any advice around that and how you make it a bit more rigid.
Patrick: Yeah that is a very common challenge because ultimately a challenge for your client too, but they have no idea what kind of content you need and how to put it together. Most people don’t know how to write a lot of you’d be surprised how many small business owners don’t have much experience writing about their business, about their product, about their service. You’ll often get this really long winded thing that no one wants to read. And I always try to get them to distill it down to like smaller and smaller until eventually get someone’s one sentence like the same, the very thing you’ll put at the top of your heading, right? When you land on the page, that sentence in the heading needs to make it clear what ex what exactly you’re offering to people, why they should be interested in one sentence. So sometimes I help them distill it to that. They’ll send me like paragraphs of stuff of like, okay; let’s shorten it, like, okay. And then they send me one paragraph, like shorten it even more. And you kind of refine it down to that one sentence, getting content in general.
You do have to kind of hold their hand along the way you got to try to take the work off their load. So I encourage my clients to at the very minimum. Just give me a rough outline about your company, about your product or service, what it is you do, just a rough outline. Give me something to work with. I’ll take care of the images. I’ll take care of the images. I’ll take care of icons, graphics, all that stuff but I need some copy. I need to know you and I always, and I kind of say it in like a flattering way. I tell them like, you know your business better than anybody. I don’t, I can’t possibly market or sell the way you’ll be able to. And that kind of gets them thinking like, okay, yeah, like, you’re right, it’s my business. Like, I’m the one doing the sales? How would I describe this to someone if I was face-to-face with them and how does that translate onto a page? So I said, don’t worry about getting it perfect. Just, just at the very least, give me a rough outline and I’ll go from there. I’ll take it from there and then we’ll refine it as we go a little, we’ll change a little paragraph here, or find the text here, but we need a backbone, some kind of structure to start with.
There are tools out there that promise to do this kind of thing. I know of one specifically, I haven’t used it personally. I’ve heard other people talk about it a lot. It’s called content snare and basically it’s a platform that it promises to remove this issue that designers constantly have with their clients. And the idea is once they sign on you create this very simple template and send it to them and say, this is exactly what I need. Like, I need this many images. I need this copy for this page, this text; I need a YouTube video for this. Or like, and it clearly articulates exactly what you need to get started. And from their point of view, they’ll be able to just simply upload the content directly to this platform. I personally haven’t had any experience with it because frankly, well, one, I try to keep the amount of tools that I need to use to a minimum. I don’t want to have too many subscriptions on the go for things that I don’t absolutely need and two, I haven’t found it completely necessary yet. I try to make things so simple for my clients so that they really feel like I’m taking the work off of their shoulders. So they don’t even have to think about it, but it does require, I try to think of it as like an 80, 20 thing. I tell them like, I can do 80% of it, but I need you to help me with the first 20, just send me whatever you got. Even if it’s just stuff you’ve already printed, like, let’s see you have a brochure, a flyer a business card. Give me any marketing materials you have send it my way. I can read it, learn about your business and take it from there.
Ben: And it helps when they’ve already got a website that you just update him, and then you can just kind of copy the text over.
Patrick: Then it’s even easier. Yeah, then you’ve already got usually as long as it’s a decent enough website, you’ve got a backbone for the copy and you can just pull that and just make a better website out of it. And then once the first draft is up, then you can start tweaking and refining and such.
Should You Force Clients to Send You All of the Necessary Content?
Ben: Yeah, I think it’s challenging because so for example, I’ve had this new, new client reach out to me. He wants a website builds plans for a living and he’s so busy. So I’ve got him to sign off on the proposal so he was Bonsai for that, which is really good. I do when they get the proposal that I run, they have to physically go in and click accept, and I give them my three or four different choices. So to go into 21, so I know we want, and you signed off on it, but now I need to get the contract signed. I want a down payment. I just kind of want to go through him. So I’ve taught her the idea of grain-free, what I could really rigid strict structure. So when they sign the contract, say from this date to this date is how long it’s going to take me this at the end date. UI need pain, regardless of whether you’ve got me, all the stuff I need. So it can go live with sample pictures and sample texts in a holding page but at that point, that’s when the bill needs pay and not two months down the line, when you decide to get me the, but I don’t know if that’s too strict or not.
Patrick: I could really; you got to be careful with that. I could see that kind of backfiring because here’s the thing you’re like; they’ve given you 50%, right?
Ben: Oh 25 we’ve been asking,
Patrick: Oh, 25, so I would always say 50%, always someone want, if they don’t want to do 50, say thanks for your time. They can go elsewhere and this is a big reason why you need that upfront investment to get them motivated. So they’re not wasting their money. 25% might be just small enough that they can put it on the back burner and forget it and procrastinate. But if you require 50% upfront before anything even starts, you get that buy-in from them. No one wants to waste 400, 500 pounds or dollars, whatever, throw it away for nothing, so I always require 50% at that point, that’s free money. You haven’t done any work yet. If they choose to procrastinate and take longer, of course you prefer like you to do the job and get the other 50% and to get a bigger pay out of it. But frankly, you’ve gotten the 50% if they want to take longer, that’s up to them.
But yet you haven’t done any actual work yet right? So technically if you’ve just gotten free money, so what I would do, and, and frankly, this does happen. I have two clients right now, actually, where we’re in this exact situation. And I have to send them an email every couple of months. Hey, how are things going? Just check in and I write a simple email, like, Hey, like, I don’t want you to have to waste your money. I’d really like to, to finish this project for you. Do you need any help? Do you need any help getting started? I always phrase it like that, like how not? Like when can you get me the content it’s, can I help you in any way? Where are you? Where are your roadblocks? Is there something that’s holding you up that will give you like a 95% response rate? People are always willing to accept help. And usually it’s just something simple. Like, honestly, I really don’t know how to, where to start. I don’t know how to write and then I can kind of, okay, well, I can work with that. Let’s do some back and forth. So always phrase it in a way that you want to help them. And you don’t want them to waste their money because essentially they’ve thrown a couple of hundred pounds at you right now for nothing.
Ben: I think it said, it’s a very good point. I think I’ve covered, so I mentioned from the start I’ve had about five or six websites now only two of those are actually live the rest of them that were just kind of pending. And then there’s a reasonable one which I managed to get full payment for because it’s like a down payment. And he’s been so lacking in responding to my emails so I’ve just said to him not, you need to pay the whole thing. And then it’s up to you when it goes live and he has actually done that now. So that was good but yeah, it’s been a challenge. It’s just trying to, I just knew one I’ve got taken on as the pond wall. You can tell he’s a busy man is working on, is working in his business Monday to Friday and the website is kind of an afterthought. So you said yes to it, but he’s not taking the next step, if that make sense. So yeah, it’s challenging in that respect.
Patrick: Yeah that’s going to happen. I have clients, like I said; I have some, a couple like that right now. And some people are, a lot of people are extremely busy and you just, you got to just try to be flexible and work with them because if you want to, I mean, maybe one day you get to a point where you can be very selective with your clients because I have a luxury now of being more selective with my clients because I’ve grown it to a point where I don’t have to accept every website that comes in. But in the beginning, especially, you’re going to take a few hits, or if you you’re going to experience a few unique challenges,
Ben: When you’re at the point where you are, where you can, you can turn down work. If you say to them, I can do it, but it can be in three months’ time, what’s your mom’s time. And then if they would inspect that, that’s really good because they buy-in.
Patrick: Yeah well again, the 50% deposit is, is important for the buy-in and if someone has an issue with that, that is a warning sign. That means they’re not bought in. That means you’re you you’re dealing with someone who could potentially become a pain. So then you’re like, okay, I understand but that’s I do that for these reasons.
How Long Does it Take to Build an Average Website?
Ben: Yeah, that makes sense. And then just in terms of like time, how long, like if say, if we do, if we say it’s a thousand dollar website to you, is that about a week, five days to complete it from start to finish or would it be longer?
Patrick: Depends on the site. It wouldn’t take me five full days. No I mean, like generally speaking, I could do a thousand dollar website and about 20 hours and that’s talking about like, you know, up to five pages type thing. Yeah. I would say about 20 hours, maybe upwards of two 30, if there’s a little more customization, more extra features and stuff, but I would say around 20, so I could pull basically like two, 10 hour days or three, eight hour days or something and it will be done.
Ben: Yeah because I’m guessing at the moment as well, I’m mostly quite new to it and I’m still tinkering a lot and trying to try and get things right. Which it’s taken longer or trying to figure things out like I’m doing this website in a minute where I’m using jet engine and the plug-in with Elementor and yeah. It can take like half a day just trying to figure out how to do one thing with that. Like in terms of like custom, custom post quarters and stuff like that.
Patrick: What do you, so you said jet engine.
Ben: Yeah jet engine. Yeah. It’s like custom posts, so you can do like, you know, loops and stuff like that. So you can have so for example, if you have a client that wants to showcase their projects, it can be like a blog, like a blog post, but rather than a traditional WordPress blog post, or just say project name, project value, description of products and the gallery of the project. And it’s like really easy for the client to put new projects on the backend of WordPress.
Patrick: Interesting I’ve never heard of it. I’m going to have to look into that.
Ben: Yeah. They’ve got quite a few good plugins. I’ve got jet engine jet. There are quite a few good ones, but I try and keep it just using jet engine because it’s quite powerful and you can do so much with it. So like for example, I’m doing the charity website, there’s one for events and so you add event. It’s a really easy for them to add new events that are going into the WordPress dashboard and all they have to fill in is event name, event dates. Who’s organizing the event, the data, the location of the event. And then when they click submit and then just populate it on the front end of the website as a new blog post, but in an event format.
Patrick: Oh, beautiful yeah. I’ll definitely have to look into that because that’s something you, that people are always going to ask for and, you know, making WordPress easier for them to be able to make those changes themselves right?
I Review Ben’s Website and Branding, DotWall
Ben: Yeah, definitely. Yeah just started with doing some membership packages as well so I think similar to yours where you do things like daily backups and that sort of thing. So when I do a proposal now I’ve got the price of the website and then underneath that there’s price. So it would be price of website in brackets, no updates and then, or no support sorry. And there’ll be another one which will be the price of the website plus the support. So you can pay a yearly and get a reduced fee or you can pay monthly. Is that the best way to do it? What was your recommendation on that one?
Patrick: Yeah, let’s pull up your pricing page here so I like that you’re trying to do transparent pricing because that’s something that if you can do it is great people like to see that they don’t want to have to request quotes from, you know, a dozen different web designers. It’s a bit of a paid so I have been looking at ways actually of kind of implementing a calculator, a pricing calculator into my sites so they can get an instant quote based on what exactly what they need, like how many pages, what features and I’m kind of productizing. So that’s what I’m kind of working on now but a lot of web designers are doing now. So something similar to what you’re doing with packages like starter package, premium package. I think that’s good. I think it’s clear enough. I feel like it might be, yeah it’s a long list of features. Sometimes these guys go like way overboard with a list of features to the point where you can’t read anything.
You always have to think about it from the perspective of a client who doesn’t even understand what any of that means. It can get pretty overwhelming for them. And so yours is pretty good. It’s not too long and I think it does clearly, like, even like with conversion optimized you have a little acronym CRO, so in case they’ve heard that term before they can understand what that means. And I think it’s clear enough the differences between the two, because you blocked out the blog and e-commerce features for the starter package, whereas the premium package does have that. So I think I think he did a good job of clearly identifying what are the differences between the two packages and then you even have an option for additional pages after that so I think it’s pretty good. I guess at this point is, so when you click let’s start, where does that take you?
Ben: Yeah, that’s actually to like a landing page have a contact form contact form. I’ve not had anyone come through this, this funnel yet. So yeah, the idea is that the land on let’s do this and then they kind of just fill out the form, tells me everything I need to know to get started and then yeah things off an email.
Patrick: Yeah. I like it and you have some good questions in the form too, like if this new site or a redesign? Obviously basic ones like how many pages do you need? Do you have a brand or not any special features, integrations?
Ben: So a lot of people don’t have a brand.
Patrick: Yes, that’s one of the questions I ask as well. Yeah because a lot of people are starting from completely from scratch and they’re going to need a logo and everything.
Ben: And I think eventually people appreciate how much you need a brand to build a website because of why it’s just a random bunch of colours and elements.
Patrick: It’s amazing how many people, they don’t think about that as an integral part. Yeah so I think you have a decent little funnel going here. It’s a good.
Ben: And then on the click on the menu to get my membership and then I’ll take you to; it’s a very similar format, so you just got this start to maintenance and then it’s and the paying and means now.
Patrick: Ah, yeah so same idea but with monthly services, design packages. Okay oh, this is different so you have a graphic design as well.
Ben: Yeah I mean full disclosure, I’m just using, I mean I can design as well.
Patrick: These are canva templates.
Ben: Exactly edited a slightly, a little bit, but Canva is amazing and even if you give a client a canva account and say, you can do that yourself, they really still can’t if they don’t know anything about design. So the idea behind that was you pay me 35 pound a month for 49 pound a month and you say, right, Ben, I need this doing for social media and, and I’ll just go in and create it on that canva account. And then yeah, that’s, that’s that, cause it really is a ridiculously good tool and it can even output in vector format now. So, which is really, really good if you want to really stand up with your work
Patrick: It’s yeah. It’s by far the best graphic design tool and using it since the beginning for years. Is that profitable for you, as it says, 39 pounds a month and you offered 10 designs
Ben: 35 pound a month for where is it? Yeah, no one’s bought it. Yeah, they’re just on there.
Patrick: But I mean for you, if someone does buy that, is that profitable because that’s basically four pounds per design.
Ben: Yeah I mean, depends on how quick, so if they’ve already got the brand encumbered and you’re just putting in logos and putting in core elements, it will take you literally minutes to create social media posts. And it’s not necessarily how much time it takes to build each post is having that consistency that they can output to that channels. And I guess that’s where the painful really and that’s what I’ve discussed when I, when I take them on.
Patrick: I think I would like to see, like when I go to the pricing page I don’t see any mention of your monthly memberships. I think that’s something you should really feature prominently because the recurring revenue should be your, your primary goal, frankly. That’s really, what helped me grow my business quickly is having the recurring revenue after I finished building the site for someone. So at the very least, I’d like to see some kind of mention on your pricing page about that service. I think that could be simplified so you have a pricing page, you have a web design page, graphic design page, a membership’s page. I think I would like to see the price. Yeah, but I noticed you do have website pricing on your web design page, which is great.
You should have, I think it should be like a dedicated landing page for web design and all the information they would ever need should be on the web design page. And only reason they should have to click away is to the call to action, to contact you, to book a call or to get a quote so rather than having to click to a separate pricing page like you already have the pricing on the web design page, which is great. But again, I don’t see any mention on your web design page about your membership, your monthly maintenance membership. So if you could combine that, like put everything about web design, your pricing, your monthly pricing and all the features and your portfolio, everything you do about web design on the web design page and then everything you needed about graphic design, same thing, all the thing, all the features you offer, your service, you offer your portfolio pricing and monthly pricing all for graphic design on the same page.
Ben: Yeah that’s a really good idea. Yeah and great to more like a landing page when you land on that, funnels them down and then they can commit to the end of it. Yeah, no, that’s good. I’m just looking at it now, actually on the web design, Pedro got a call to action in the first, just after the first paragraph, which is way too soon I think.
Patrick: I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with having that option at the front. Most people won’t take it they’ll need it they’ll need a little more convincing, but some people are just looking for that. So there’s nothing wrong with making it obvious. So I would keep that, but then most people will they’ll scroll down. They’ll need to be convinced a little bit more. And then I would actually, I would say your call to action at the bottom is a little too little, too much white space. I think it’s a little too hard to find scroll down to it.
Ben: Oh yeah. I’ve seen now on a few websites, I really liked it. I think it works a lot better on mobile. So when you’re on a mobile and you go down, when you scroll down to the bottom of the page, when it would a full page with one call to action, it just looks really nice and simple beyond desktop. It just looks a bit, a bit big on screen.
Patrick: The other thing is your, so the text that says ready to get started, that links to a Google doc form, but your let’s go button links to your let’s start landing page.
Ben: Oh yeah I didn’t even notice that with the link. They’re not ready to get started.
Patrick: Yeah that can create some confusion if there’s two separate places to, so I think you’re very close. You’ve done a lot of great stuff already. It’s just some refining, like you talked about in the beginning of the funnel, making it super easy for people to follow this process. Just scroll down the page and then there’s only one call to action. Okay.
Ben: Yeah, no that’s Oh yeah, you’re right, so I’ll work on that. Yeah, I mean, I’m getting a little bit of traffic to the website. I’m not getting too much organic. Oh yeah to watch you as well. You know, if regards to my menu, is that good for SEO or do I need to revert back to standardized elemental manual SEO.
Patrick: You mean the mobile style menu that you here?
Ben: I’ve heard that having it because it’s going to just pop out, pop up, sorry. Element pop up but I’ve heard it’s not great for SEO because it can’t really tell the structure of the book.
Patrick: Yeah. I wouldn’t do that. You know what it is, it looks cool. It’s very clever and like artists, it’s one of those things where you’re like, man, this looks awesome. It’s like a sweet feature. It’s like artistic, it’s a design thing. However, it actually damages the user experience and sometimes I’ve done this before too. I’m like, this is going to be such a cool, like graphic or animation or like pop up and then I do it. And then I find it actually damages my experience. People will contact me, like, it’s a little hard to find this or that, or like, I couldn’t find your menu or something and I’d be like, and the right. So sometimes we overthink it and we try to get a little too fancy and then we damage like simple Simple’s better. And yeah, I would honestly, I think you’d be better off just having a standard may across the top and lay it out so people could even, they could see just across everything you do without even actually have to click on anything. Right now you have to click on this hamburger icon for the menu to pop up.
Ben: Yeah. That’s a good point. And I think is, when you don’t want to Google, when you see, if you are an established business, you might have known this on yours. I think you’re doing, it’s got the, the Google like structure breakdown so another type of the website and then on different pages than the meeting.
Patrick: Yeah and you may want, it’s listed in Google with like the sub links kind of underneath it.
Optimizing Your Website For Google’s Presentation
Ben: Exactly! Yeah. It looks like a proper little structure. Yeah. You’ve got it on yours. So you’ve got web launch, and I don’t believe you’ve got the blog fast and affordable uncontrolled. How does, how do you get that? Does that anything you have to do to get that? Or
Patrick: That’s kind of just like I think that would be in your schema structure, but to be honest, Google is the one that decides whether they list it like that or not. You don’t have a complete say in it. You can try to do little things to encourage it, but ultimately Google is the one that figures out whether that is useful for the search intent of what the person’s looking for. So I didn’t use, I didn’t use to have that, but at some point, as my site grew and I had like different landing pages and I had a blog and I had categories for the blog, how to YouTube channel that about like, once it expanded, Google felt like, okay, it might make sense to have multiple links to these different pages because they, while they fall under the same brand, there are different intent.
Ben: Yeah no, that makes sense and I guess then once you’ve got your domain, got a bit of authority has been there for a while and it will also start to do it slowly.
Patrick: Yeah. I would, I would worry less about that and just kind of again, think about each of your landing pages as a funnel, picture someone actually, instead of landing on your homepage, they’re landing directly on your web design page and that’s very realistic. That is what happens because people will search for graphic design and your graphic design page will pop up instead of your homepage. And then that’s what they’re going to land on. So you want to dedicate everything on that page for that?
Ben: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
How Ben Found My Podcast and Final Thoughts
Patrick: Okay. I think we have time for one more question, if you got one.
Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve, we’ve been through most of my main struggles at the minute where like we spoke about before, it’s just client commitments, client pay structure, and, but yeah. From you, from what you said, getting 50% off throne from that’s really good. I didn’t even think of that to be fair for the financial buy-in. Yeah then just, yeah so with the copy sort of thing. Yeah I’ve got a few good tips for me there as well. So like getting a little bit from them and then kind of I can, I can do the rest of it, but no, that’s good to be fair.
Patrick: Yeah, just, yeah and just to kind of drive that point home with the content. I know it’s every web designers, frustration not receiving the content from them. So it’s, I’ve try really hard to empathize with them and figure out where they’re coming from and come at it from a point of view that I’m trying to help them. Like, how can I help you make, how can I make this easier for you? And you’ll get an answer, trust me. People always want easier.
Ben: No, that makes a lot of sense. I’m assuming like you as well, you can create the page and innately, you can just go in and edit what they want to anyway. You can’t do so it’s not the end of the world. If I just kind of, I mean, I’ve done a few sites now, like the charity website I’ve gone in and put my own text in there thinking what they might want to put in there. And then when they’re reviewing the site, they’ve gone oh, I’m not sure what you mean by this. And the last, just simple text that’s for you to change it. It’s not real text.
Patrick: Yeah they often think that’s like a final, final copy or something, or other like what you were trying to say with that. And you’re like, no; it’s just filler text for you to write. But yeah, unfortunately that is and you’ll get very good at that, but you’ll, over the years, you’re going to get a lot of practice writing copy and that meant copywriting; copywriting, storytelling those are high level. People will pay a lot of money for a good copywriter; a good storyteller because that’s storytelling is a fundamental element of just of being human. We never get tired of stories. It doesn’t even matter the medium of it, but a good storyteller it’ll hook us every time. And that’s what sales, that’s a salesman do.
Ben: Yeah, that was pretty good but yeah, thank you very much for that, Patrick. That’s been, that’s been a little bit all right.
Patrick: No it’s good. Yeah I enjoy doing this. It’s nice it’s fun chatting with people all over the world. I’ve talked with people from like 15 different countries at this point, all at like different stages of their web design journey, but mostly, almost all at the beginning because that’s kind of what this is designed for and
Ben: No, it was fascinating. I picked it up on Spotify I think and I just searched for web designers or something in the podcast section and yeah, it just popped up. I think I’ve listened to probably one in the past 10 or 12 podcasts now, so no; it’s really good really good.
Patrick: Sweet! Well, thanks for stopping by. I look forward to seeing how your website and business evolves.
Ben: Yeah brilliant. Thank you for very much for that and I’ll yeah, got some good ideas there so I can go away and evolve them.
Patrick: Sweet! Alright stay safe, Ben.
Ben: Cool thanks Patrick, bye.
